The Book of Many Secrets

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

Pages: 337 Genre: horror, mystery

Rating: 4 Star

My Kindle Notes and Highlights

I'm not going to write a description for this book. There's barely one available on Goodreads, and I think it's better to go in completely blind. The main things you should know are this:

• I would say it definitely leans more mystery than horror. It's a horror book in the same way that The Haunting of Hill House is, if you've read the book (not the show), or even something like Our Wives Under the Sea.

• It's an uphill battle. The first half (literally, the first 50% or so) had me baffled to the point that I almost set the book down. Keep reading; you will be rewarded.

Happy reading! You can come back to my review after. Or you can just keep reading now, I suppose, if you're really uninterested or simply not sold, you can keep reading now.

I'm really glad I stuck with this book. I had picked it up exclusively because it was advertised as having a POV from a cat, and I thought that was a fun and unique way to tell a story. This meant I knew nothing going in, and I was really not into it for a long time. Sure, it was interesting, and I had a gut feeling there would be some kind of payoff, but right before the 50% mark I was seriously trying to figure out how I would write a review for a book where I couldn't understand a single thing that was happening.

What I was actually witnessing was a series of building blocks that I'm sure will be a lot more engaging upon a re-read. I don't think it would be fair to negatively judge a book for an incomplete portion of the plot, but there is something to be said about the severe lack of awareness I had at the beginning. Perhaps it was just me and other readers will be more successful.

That being said, once things started to click, I was IN. I was a little worried that this would actually turn out to be the most boring and cliche horror book I could've possibly picked up, but I think the author did a very good job executing her vision. The author's note gave a lot of insight not just into her research but also her intention while writing, which was also helpful.

The characters really carried this book. They were vast and wildly unique, but they all worked together really well. For the half of the book where I was unsure about it all, the thing that kept me engaged was the characters. I wanted good things to happen to them. And I thought the author did a good job of balancing characters that are not explicitly good people while still being worthy of compassion.

I'm really glad I ended up reading this book, and I'm excited to reread it someday. Maybe I'll even get to appreciate the first half this time.